From the Bookshelf of Science and Inquiry…

The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life

David Quammen

Start date: February 1, 2019

Finish date: February 28, 2019

Discussion: Book Club 2019

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 26 topics — 448 comments total

Book Club 2019

December 2019 - Uninhabitable Earth
By Betsy , co-mod · 8 posts · 108 views

last updated Dec 21, 2020 08:09AM

November 2019 - Invisible Women
By Betsy , co-mod · 17 posts · 122 views

last updated Oct 18, 2020 06:07PM

showing 2 of 2 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Jan 13, 2019 Bob Finch rated it really liked it

Shelves: science

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. An excellent tale of how molecular biology has amended the evolutionary concept of a strictly linear descent of species through random genetic mutations and natural selection that gives rise to a branching “Tree of Life.” Told through the lives, works, and personalities of scientists responsible for key discoveries, the author emphasizes the humanity of the scientific enterprise.

At the root of Quammen’s story are three discoveries that changed how we understand the emergence and evolution of lif An excellent tale of how molecular biology has amended the evolutionary concept of a strictly linear descent of species through random genetic mutations and natural selection that gives rise to a branching “Tree of Life.” Told through the lives, works, and personalities of scientists responsible for key discoveries, the author emphasizes the humanity of the scientific enterprise.

At the root of Quammen’s story are three discoveries that changed how we understand the emergence and evolution of life over 4+ billion years. These are the discovery of Archea as a 3rd unique category of life (distinct from bacteria and eukaryotes, which comprise plants, animals and fungi); the revelation that genes can transfer across species and even kingdoms, rather than just from parent to offspring (and can lead to giant and rapid changes in heritable genetic modifications); and the apparent descent of all living beings from the Archea (though this last “discovery” is more tentative and not much emphasized in the book).

Much of Tangled Tree focuses on the second discovery, primarily the concept of horizontal gene transfer, through which disparate species can acquire genes directly from one another through a variety of mechanisms, including infection (e.g., 8% of the human genome derives from viruses). Such cross-species gene transfer upends the conventional concept of an ever-branching (always diverging) Tree of Life, and Quammen expends a good deal of ink on the history of that concept.

Quammen also devotes much of the book to the life and personality of the discoverer of the Archea as a distinct life form, Dr. Carl Woese. Woese was apparently a brilliant but idiosyncratic and increasingly difficult scientist dedicated to understanding the very root of life and its 4B-year evolution. Woes was an iconoclast (even denigrating Darwin) and a complex individual. Quammen weaves Woese’s story throughout the book. In fact, The Tangled Tree comes off as something of an homage to Woese, who died in 2012.

Although the three overarching discoveries described in The Tangled Tree are probably familiar to those interested in evolutionary biology, Quammen does a nice job of synthesizing the concepts through an engaging narrative that emphasizes the scientists who made the discoveries. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Feb 18, 2019 Monty rated it really liked it

An interesting narrative of what has been learned about evolutionary and molecular biology. It tells the story of the people as well as the science.

1 like · Like · see review

Oct 23, 2019 Kathleen rated it liked it

I learned some new things but it was a long slog. Quammen starts out strong on horizontal gene transfer and the tree of life analogy. He gets sidetracked by a fascination with Carl Woese that I don't get. The more I learned about him, the less I liked him. I think what I learned was that genetic variation may be as much from HGT as from random mutations, but the book doesn't go there. Quammen seems to go down a weird "species aren't real" rabbit hole. ...more

Like · see review

Feb 01, 2020 Deanna Necula rated it it was ok

Enough about the damn tree. Perhaps I came at this with more of a scientific bent rather than an eye for the historical details, but this book is a web of mind-numbing historical crumbs that obscure the scientific value. And the tree! I get it’s a book about the tree of life, but the author fell in love with this metaphor and took it to high heaven. Incredibly repetitive. I really wanted to like this book, and it was impeccably well-researched, but nearly 200 pages too long (200 pages in is wher ...more

Like · see review